The hotels of ‘60s affected Greek architectural thinking. In a period which finds Greece trying to reorganize itself, struggling to forget the Civil War, there is a progress, which is being made regarding social providence and cultural background. In the meantime the challenge of Tourism as a brand new social phenomenon emerges, a challenge remarkably profitable for the developing economy of Greece.
In the beginning there are Hotels of a large scale like Hilton and Mont Parnes which are chronically placed at the end of ‘50s. We have to do with buildings-representatives of a reorganized country in every aspect.
Delving deeper there are the efforts on behalf of Greek Tourism Organization with Hotels “Xenia”, whose row has been highly affected by two people who had been managers in the Constractual E.O.T Department: Chralambos Sfaellos (1950-1958) and Aris Konstantinidis (1958-67) C. Sfaellos respects the traditional environment, creating hotels which tend to comply with the resided constructed surroundings.
Xenia hotels adopt a common typology under the direction of A. Konstantinidis who targets at a designing line derived by the principles of a postwar modernization (modern dominates into an existed constructed background). He sets as a major priority the respect towards Greek natural environment whose particular features command the working of materials and the color tone selection.
The concept of “greekness” appears in a sense which varies in Hilton- Mont Parnes and Xenia Hotels. In the first case a superficial reproduction struggles to ensure the fulfillment of this idea, in the second case this idea exists from scratch, in the beginning of a synthesis or a synthesis itself.
Nikos Valsamakis represents a number of important individual efforts as far as building hotels is concerned, except for the hard work of EOT. In addition, a particular effort is being made to describe these tendencies regarding tourism buildings’s impact to Thessaly.
A matter of perpetuality of Greek Hotels is posed nowadays as those buildings find themselves in the verge of extinction or a total alteration in their special architectural typology.
